For thousands of years, Science and its mysteries have been forbidden fruits for a larger section of mankind. Though many are amused at the inventions Science has gifted the world - starting from wheels to rocket technology - it has not been everyone’s cup of tea to experiment with Science and arrive at new inventions.
There could only be one Newton or Einstein! Or even our former President late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam for that matter who invented the light weight foot assistance for physically challenged children. Though some might feel it ambitious to make comparisons between the fathers of Science and those who adopted their ideas, a new school of thought emerging from Coimbatore likes to think otherwise.
It’s funny one has to mention the phrase “School of thought”, but fittingly enough atleast for this case, it is a thought that emerged out of kids from school. Many kids have different ideas and thought process that stand out, but what makes these eighteen and nineteen year old kids special is that they have been able to give life and form to their thought process by converting it into an organisation, the School of Science.
Their “School of thought” per se, is very simple. “Everyone is born a scientist! If one makes necessary changes in his or her approach to Science, their perspective on the world on the whole would change rapidly, yet progressively.”
Based on this idea and a hardcore love for Science, a team of six teens now in their eighteens and nineteens started the organisation in February 2017. “I initially had this idea and I shared it with my friends when we were in 12th standard. Everyone else was interested and so we thought we could start right away,” says Saradha Senthilvelu, the 18-year-old Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of School of Science.
Saradha who is currently pursuing her MSc in Integrated Physics at Amrita University was lucky enough to find likeminded friends who made this possible. What the organisation is involved in even at a beginning stage may seem too much for their age, but with the expertise they possess in required areas, they do make non-scientific nerds look like fools.
Forming a team, their initial goal was to form a definition for science and thereby for their organisation, and to answer that in the words of Arjhun, another 18-yearo-old Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of the organisation and a student of Integrated MSc Mathematics at the same University, “Science is the basic and simple way of thinking. It is rather the direct way of looking at the Universe”. Easier said than done!
However, with these sharp minds, things just do not stop with framing a definition, and they have taken it to the next step of making people see Science more rationally or rather in a way that is less complex. “Science has been looked upon as a subject, but it is not. It is a part of our lives and we should look at it that way. Rather than explaining children using textbooks, use examples that would involve their participation, after all, science happens in everything we do,” explains Arjhun.
The team has also started doing what they preach by sharing science facts through posters, info graphics and even videos through social media. Their Facebook page ‘School of Science’ holds plenty of such facts translated to the general public through simple visual items. R. Vineeth, Content Creator and Co-Founder, pursuing Civil Engineering also from Amrita, says that the organisation is also planning to do explanatory videos to help people learn more about science and also take sessions in different schools.
The organisation had also recently conducted ‘March for Science’, a global event that was aimed at creating awareness about science.
On the whole, just out of school, they want to bring about a change in the education system that sees science as a subject. “The current system suppresses your innovative ideas be it whatever board you are in. The same happened to us. Neither our innovative ideas nor our practical knowledge is given is importance in schools. If these change, then the entire system would change,” Saradha adds.
Their aim is to make people ask questions repeatedly and thereby arrive at answers. “You can learn only if you ask questions and it is difficult in a system that teaches you value education in a book,” she says. Claiming that this can be achieved when people start deviating from the conventional way of thinking Vineeth opines that the logo of their organisation featuring a Phoenix was created to bring about a rebirth in knowledge.
Apart from running the organisation and running after their studies, the team does a variety of things in their past time. While reading, a lot of it and her acoustic guitar excites Saradha and Arjhun involves himself in complex activities like making videos, writing and designing posters, Vineeth explores books and plays a fair bit of cricket with friends.
They could be the COOs, CEOs and Founders of any organisation, but in the words of their parents, these brainstorms - who are are surely to bring about a considerable change among others in the approach towards science - are nothing more than “immature little rats who run around the house, yet are sustainable on their own”.